Gastone Novelli (1925-1968)
Untitled (Homage to Samuel Beckett)
mixed media, on paper
signed and dated bottom left ‘Novelli 60’
verso inscribed in pen by Samuel Beckett to Barbara Bray ‘for Barbara / from Sam / with love / Paris May / 1962’
27.2 × 39.2 in. (69 × 99.6 cm)
Presented by the artist to Samuel Beckett as a record of their first meeting in Paris in 1960, and incorporating passages from Beckett’s Textes pour rien (1958), this previously unrecorded work was gifted by Beckett to his long-term partner Barbara Bray in 1962, and was sold on behalf of her heirs by Joseph Friedman Ltd to the British Museum
